“During our Kickstarter campaign, the Wii U was at the height of its popularity, but the situation has drastically changed after the release of Nintendo Switch,” Bloodstained designer Koji Igarashi said on the game’s Kickstarter page. “This change made it difficult to receive the necessary support from the hardware maker, which has led us to drop the Wii U development and shift the development to Nintendo Switch.”

The last sentence of that statement is rather telling. Does Nintendo see it's infant hybrid as already a more viable platform that its veteran Wii U? Of course, Nintendo has stopped making the Wii U, and has doubled down on Switch production even before the hybrid console is a month old, so the lack of "necessary support" for Wii U could just be Nintendo's way of emphasizing that Switch is its new little powerhouse, and it won't be distracted from that mission by supporting an out-of-date piece of hardware.

Fans who wanted a Wii U version of the game can go to the Backer's survey and click the Change Your Survey Answers link to choose a new version. The game is also being developed for PC, PS4, Xbox One, or Vita. If none of those appeal to you, you can apply for a refund by April 20, but you will need a PayPal account to get your pledge money back.

It is interesting that the Vita is in there, meaning that Sony continues to offer support for its handheld despite its dwindling library in comparison to the 3DS–a major contrast in philosophy than being exhibited by Nintendo, even without an official statement. Keep an eye out for other developers dropping Wii U development all together as Nintendo quietly nudges them toward the Switch.

John Keefer

Contributing Editor

John Keefer is a curmudgeon that has been in journalism for 35 years, the last 16 in the video games industry. He loves real-time strategy games and prefers old-school Total Annihilation to StarCraft. He also loves isometric RPGs, and has been addicted to World of Warcraft for more than 10 years. He sucks at shooters and multiplayer and is purely a PC guy. And being a former member of Shack, he also likes Chatty. Go figure.